I love reading this stuff about how Europe's or Mediterranean societies evolved. "When the First Farmers Arrived in Europe, Inequality Evolved" :
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-first-farmers-arrived-in-europe-inequality-evolved/
It's an interesting long read how farmers from the Middle East gradually settled in the hunter-gatherer areas in central and western Europe.
5700 years ago, Michelsberg near Frankfurt, Germany, peaked its farmer population. Agricultural surplus generation had already lead to a stratified, hierarchical society. Descendants of former hunter-gatherers (tall, strong, dark haired, blue eyes) had been enslaved.
Then all of a sudden 5500 years ago, village populations started to massacre one another.
And here's where the article or the archaeological research could benefit from looking at climate factors – which they apparently don't, or the (really cool) article would surely mention climate, no?
5700 years ago is AD_-3750__BP_5700 on the x-axis, in the very center of the chart.
The blue line is Greenland temperature (proxy). Slow decline follows Milankovic cycles.
The magenta line is sulfur injections from volcanic eruptions.
The horizontal magenta line (mean sulfur Tg) incidentally also denotes the stratospheric sulfur injection by Pinatubo's eruption in 1991, about 5 Tg.
That Michelberg's population peaked around 5700 years ago then wasn't a symptom of flourishing agriculture but a result of famines caused by the many huge eruptions in short succession just before that time. When far-away farmers abandoned their drought-stricken, snow covered fields to flee to the trading hub Michelsberg.
Much like the sudden urbanisation following the drought in Syria 20 years ago wasn't a symptom of a flourishing society but a reaction to climate change. A bad period.
This my hypothesis also suggests that the societal stratification gleaned from burial practices in 5700 BP also wasn't a symptom of a well-off society with lotsa surplus in agricultural output – but a symptom of resource shortages caused by the many volcanic eruptions.
Strongmen gathered thugs around them, ruled over scarce resources and enslaved foreigners like the descendants of the hunter-gatherers.
Michelsberg's total abandonment by 5500 BP comes 50 years after Greenland's temperature line shows a series of very low dips which very likely also occurred in Germany. Not caused by volcanism in this case. Maybe the AMOC hickupped. Dunno.
But likely bad for agriculture and other health issues like typhoid epidemics.
#archaeology #archeology #climateChange #paleoclimate #volcanoes #agriculture #EuropeHistory
